Today

"It might sound sentimental to say it, but we are blessed by the dead, and we know that we are, in spite of our protestations to the contrary. They leave spaces in our lives that, for some of us, are the closest thing to sacred that we ever know."
 - John Burnside

No World Domination After Lunch Today

“Space is infinite to men without destinations.”

-       Alasdair Gray, Lanark

Operation Inherent Flaw has been an unqualified success in the sense that I’m still alive. For the first time, I went to the new orthodontist today all by myself into the big city, and I made it home.

I have a talking nav system in my car. When I programmed in the address, the nice lady - inexplicably named Louella - directed me there. Unfortunately, her directions for getting home were inexplicable. Lu assumes road are all at ground level. However, there are a lot of places in Seattle (especially when crossing between Puget Sound and the mainland downtown across a body of water I have yet to identify) where there are roads on top of roads. Lu usually detects when I miss a turn because my icon moves the wrong way on the map. But when I take a road above the road she told me to take, she gets confused and thinks I’m still at sea level on some frontage road leading to the bridge when I’m on a very long entrance ramp at a different altitude.

Or, perhaps she’s trying to kill me. All the way across the bridge across the water, she kept telling me to turn right.  She told me to take imaginary exits while I calmly stayed the course and finally un-pried my white knuckles from the steering wheel to hit the “suspend stupid guidance” button to shut her up after I made it across the bridge without taking her advice to plummet to a watery grave.  Good job, you.

I was so elated to make it home on my own that I had wine for lunch. This required me to reschedule my call to the home warranty people about the circuit breaker that trips halfway through the washing machine cycle; talk with the escrow people about the escrow snafu du jour, or call and attempt to speak to humans about health, home, or car insurance.

This decision not to interact with other humans was made after I barely get through a call from a guy who called to schedule delivery of my new mattress. I was all, I want it tonight, dude and he was all, next Wednesday and somebody over 18 has to sign for it. I solemnly assured him I was old enough to sign for a stupid mattress and in fact, by next Wednesday I should have overthrown the stupid Washington State Department of Licensing which sounds like a good name to call a place until you realize you have to go to a different place to register your car and the DOL doesn’t make appointments and their website doesn’t tell me whether I have to pass a written or road test. And plus, I have to cross the bridge and take some other 3-D route that cause Louella to attempt to murder me again to get to a DMV, I mean a DOL.

So, Wednesday then, said the poor guy. He shall taste the bitter wine of defeat when I abolish those two branches of state government. And the Department of Redundancy Department, I said after I hung up.

The wine, and the possibly unwise conversation with the delivery schedule guy about the auto licensing and registration procedure, caused me to re-think the wisdom of attempting to conquer the world before dinner. I still have goals. They are just flexible is all. Decaf latte, anyone?